Crypto CEO Becomes One of the World’s Richest Billionaires

Changpeng Zhao, popularly known as “CZ”, the founder and CEO of Binance has joined the list of the world’s richest billionaires. Binance, his cryptocurrency exchange is the reason for him, being in the limelight. CZ launched Binance in July 2017, with an initial coin offering of 15 million dollars. And in less than a year, he grew Binance into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, by trading volume. Binance’s fast growth appeared menacing because there appeared chances for it to monopolize the industry. Changpeng Zhao created Binance to establish a trading platform that was independent of fiat currencies. There was such a huge rise in the business with Binance garnering $7.5 million in commission fees alone.

There are many reasons for its sudden rise and the major one is, launching the company at the right time. 2017 was the year when Bitcoin and cryptocurrency were thriving so much so that there was a 3400% spike in its market value, surging from 17.5 billion to 612 billion dollars. His growth portrays the boom of the thriving industry of digital and electronic currencies. 
Forbes placed Changpeng Zhao third on their list of “The Richest People in Cryptocurrency” in their February 2018 issue, given his net worth of a whopping $96 million. Before Binance, CZ had launched a company in Shanghai called Fusion Systems in 2005 but it wasn’t a big success. The rise of the exchange, of course, sparked controversy and there were one too many hiccups along the way but this didn’t deter the CEO.

Binance’s users increased from 2 million users to 10 million users and this growth sparked some controversy when crypto advocate, John McAffee that the exchange was hacked based on reports of technical difficulties from Binance users. To prove his allegations wrong, the company posted a public statement of Twitter stating that all the funds of the users were safe. The company battled rumours of terrorist connections and even partnered with CipherTrace to improve its anti-money laundering (AML) policies.

Despite all of the controversies, this dynamic CEO surged forward with many acquisitions and mergers, the most notable among them being the acquisition of CoinMarketCap, the largest crypto data aggregator. 
The rise of Binance can be attributed to an efficient PR team and vocal CEO who wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions and protect the reputation of his business. He also comments that he wishes to make the digital currency world available to a wider population, increasing its safety measures and about how much of his proceeds will be going into charitable organizations.